"Exogenesis," Pat said, expelling the word on a breath.
Peter and Cecily looked at me. I include Peter, because he never did fail to turn his lifeless eyes in the direction of the speaker, a habit most blind people never acquire but one that is very reassuring to the sighted. Peter always tried to avoid embarrassing people.
"I take it that you have arrived at some method of accomplishing exogenesis. Doctor?" Peter asked.
"Dr. Craft believes it can be done." Pat was careful, as I'd insisted she should be, not to present the plan as an established procedure. "There are problems," she said, in a masterpiece of understatement; "much to be discussed…"
"Who's the other mother?" asked Cecily, jumping a giant step ahead.
Peter turned unerringly toward his sister. At Cecily's gasping sob, Wizard gave a low whine. Peter quietly reassured him.
"I had a suspicion you'd been up to something. Pat," he said dryly. "I hardly anticipated something as momentous as this. Smacks of the incestuous, I'd say, doesn't it. Doctor?"
"Peter! How can you even mention such a thing in connection with your sister after she's suggested this… incredible sacrifice?" Cecily's voice quavered, partly from outrage, partly from tears.
"What else can it be called when your own sister proposes to have your child…" he said, smiling slightly as he patted his wife's hand.
My respect for Peter Kellogg's perception rose several notches. He had unerringly touched one of the difficulties, taken it out, laughed at it and let it be put in its place.
"It'll be my child," Cecily said fervently. The terrible child-hunger in her face vividly confirmed all that Pat had told me about Cecily's obsession for a child of her own conception. I had seen that look before, in other eyes, and had been unable to bring hope. What if I could bring hope now? And what would happen to Cecily if we failed?
"It won't, of course, draw anything but prenatal nourishment from its host-mother," I said, resorting to the clinical to hide my emotions. "That is - and I cannot stress this strongly enough, Mrs. Kellogg - if transplantation is possible. You do realize that's a very big if."
Cecily gave a sigh and then smiled impishly at me. "I know, Dr. Craft. I must not permit myself to hope. But don't you see, hope is so vital an ingredient."
I saw Peter's fingers tighten around her hand, and then he turned to me. "What are the chances?"
"Would you believe one out of four cats?" I couldn't bear the tautness of Cecily's face. "Actually, it works out four to one in rabbits, and with livestock experiments in Texas, a ninety-five percent success with cows and sheep."
"Baaaaa," said Cecily, and again she grinned impishly to show that she was in complete control of herself.
"I've prepared some diagrams, and I've a plan of action to propose," I said, and dug into the bulging briefcase.
Several hours later, we had discussed procedure, probabilities, problems from as many angles as four minds could find. I had explained all the relevant medical procedures, some of which seemed brutal, in the apartment of the prospective parents. My eyes were drawn again and again, unwillingly, to Cecily's oval, delicately flushed face. Despite her continued lightness of word and expression, the hope rekindled was heartbreakingly apparent.
Pat moved to sit beside her brother on the couch. As Peter relied on the verbal descriptions, he leaned back so that the two women could crowd over the diagrams and charts spread over the coffee table. Occasionally he seized his wife's hand to calm her; once, as I explained Pat's role, his other hand gripped his sister's shoulder so tightly that she winced a little. His immense patience and incredible perception made him a good focal point for me, and it was easier to speak to his calm, attentive face than to Cecily's.
He and his wife must have already examined the possibility of exogenesis, or had a superior knowledge of biology, for they showed their familiarity with the principles involved.
"Yes, I can see why cats - maybe; sheep and cows, yes. Let's hope there's more of the bovine in you, darling, than the feline," Peter said, summing up.
"Ha! We'll just blanket the target areas until we succeed. And try and try and try," said Cecily staunchly. "I'm more than willing."
"And that, my darling, is exactly what we have to guard against in you."
"Can you endure the disappointments we're likely to encounter, Cecily?" I asked her bluntly. "In view of your previous medical history," and they all knew I meant psychological, "you will have the hardest task."
"Trust the men to have the easy one," said Cecily, lightly giving a mock angry buffet to Peter's arm.
"That's why we're the superior sex," he said, laughing and pretending to duck from expected blows.
"Even if transplantation is successful," I went on, "you must restrain yourself until such time as you actually hold the child…"
"My child…"
"In your arms."
"Hey, don't hold your breath," Pat piped up, for that was what Cecily was doing. She laughed sheepishly with the rest of us.
I left Pat with them after making arrangements with Cecily to come to my office for a preliminary pelvic. Then I'd schedule the initial D amp;Cs for both women.
The warmth of the relationship among the three people, along with Pat's extraordinary willingness to attempt this improbability, warmed me all my cold way home in the frigid car. I still didn't quite fathom myself caught up in an event as momentous as this, my abandoned sophomoric dream, might be. No matter: my routine existence took on a hidden relish as I became drawn closer and closer to the three amazing people. Cecily's fervent, oft-repeated "We will! We must!" became my credo, too.
Those memories were as strong and vivid as the acid interview with Cecily's fashion-plate mother. Night had fallen now, and my drink was stale. I had another one, stiffer, for courage.
The preliminary steps had gone without a hitch: by a miracle I didn't wish - yet - to subject too much scientific discussion, the successful transplantation of the fertilized ovum had been accomplished by the third attempt. I had fervently believed that the little plastic film trap would be superior to any form of flushing, but if it hadn't done the trick the third time, I would've been forced by Chuck's arguments to try flushing. Three times he had made the trip across the state to act as anesthetist at odd early hours in our cottage hospital.
"To think I'm being dictated to by a thermometer's variations," he'd growl.
We were lucky, too, in that there were no questions in the minds of the hospital administration. Cecily Kellogg had had three spontaneous abortions within those walls: if she was willing to keep trying to carry to term, the hospital couldn't care less - so long as her bills were paid. Pat showed up in the record as a blood donor. Chuck and I would take Pat home each time directly she came out of the anesthesia to preserve the fiction, while Cecily rested on in the ward. At Chuck's insistence, we both kept complete, chronological records of our procedures, and, for added veracity, punched them in on the staff time clock.
"Remember," he cautioned me more than once, "we will definitely not be able, or want, to keep this a secret. Let's just hope there's no premature slipup."
I recall groaning at this choice of phrase.
"Sorry about that, Ali. I just shudder to think of the holy medical hell that's going to break loose when this gets out."
"We're not doing anything illegal."
He gave me a patient, forbearing look. "No, we're not, Allison, love. But we are doing something that hasn't been done before, and that is always suspect. I grant you the techniques and theories are pretty well known and understood, but no… one… has… done… it on, of all sanctities, the human body." He reverently folded his hands and assumed a pious attitude for a split second. "May I remind you that exogenesis smacks marvelously of the blasphemous?"